1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handling robot system (also referred to as an article supplying apparatus), in which a desired article is held and picked from among a plurality of articles and is conveyed and supplied to a designated location.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical assembly factory, it is a commonly performed process that a robot holds desired articles to be picked, one by one, from among a plurality of articles (or workpieces) and supplies each article to a designated location. In this type of handling process, the efficiency, economy and reliability, etc. of the system depends on a technique for bringing the articles to a working location at which the robot operates to hold the desired article. Conventionally, a mechanical parts-feeder is generally used to bring the articles to the location for the article-holding operation by the robot. Also, a technique in which the actual position (or position and orientation) of the article to be held is detected by a two-dimensional or three-dimensional vision sensor, and the operation of the robot is thereby corrected, so as to hold the article.
In a handling robot system (also referred to as an article supplying apparatus) having the above-described configuration, in a case where a large number of articles are simultaneously brought to the location for the article-holding operation in view of an improvement in efficiency, etc., it is required to rearrange the articles into a suitably dispersed or scattered condition (i.e., a condition where the overlapping between the articles is eliminated) by applying an intermittent vibration to the stack of a large number of articles, for the purpose of facilitating the holding operation for the desired article by the robot. In this connection, the articles may be damaged if the amplitude of the vibration to be applied is excessively large. Also, in a case where the several types of articles having different sizes, shapes, etc. are simultaneously brought to the location for the article-holding operation, it is required to adjust article-holding operations for respective articles so as to correspond to the type of the article to be held.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a novel handling robot system (or an article supplying apparatus) which has a simple configuration and is capable of suitably dispersing or scattering a large number of articles, even when the large number of articles are simultaneously brought to a location for the article-holding operation of a robot, without subjecting the articles to adverse effects due to the vibration, and which permits a robot to easily and accurately hold the desired article on the basis of the recognition/detection result of a vision or visual sensor. It is also desired to provide a novel handling robot system (or an article supplying apparatus) which allows a supplying operation (or a pick-and-place operation) to be smoothly performed on the several types of articles stacked at a location for the article-holding operation. In this case, it is desired for the handling robot system to be capable of suitably dispersing the articles only by a simple motion such as a vibration, of storing and containing a large number of articles, and of easily performing a continuous operation for a long period.